omg I love this book. I have a little obsession with paper art and crafts at the moment and have been digesting lots of books on the subject. Playing with Books is not the best I've seen if you're looking for examples of the art, but it's a must have for people who like to get their hands dirty because it's truly a craft book. There are plenty of tutorials on remaking books into art and other forms, and making all sorts of cool stuff with book pages, and best thing is the projects are not out of reach at all for amateur paper crafters and paper lovers.

When I look at books like Papercraft: Design and Art with Paper and Masters: Book Arts, which are both smorgasbords of paper and book art, all I can pretty much do is gawk. I think it's near impossible for me to reproduce most of the works featured there. But there are a lot of things in Playing with Books that aren't too difficult to make, and they are cute and practical too. How about folding a nice sheet of paper to make a special envelope? Or cutting up some paperback covers into postcards? Too easy? All right then, try making your own billfold, beads, bag, flowers, ornaments, mobile, gift box or wreath. The photo-accompanied instructions will help you do all that. Other than one advanced project (book vase) which requires the use of power tools, the other projects are quite easily achievable and what you'll need are easily found at home or in craft shops.

There is also a gallery of artworks from paper artists that unfortunately fall in the realm of the unachievable for me, except maybe one or two - with a lot of patience and a lot more practice for sure. For now, though, it's more amazing paper art to admire.

Jason Thompson is the author of another book I enjoyed, Making Journals by Hand (I have a copy of Making Memory Books and Journals by Hand, which is a compilation of projects from 3 books including Making Journals by Hand, which you can buy for as little as 50 cents pre-shipping at Amazon, which is a damn good value. I paid about 20 times that plus international shipping and I think that was worth it! ).

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